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Vladimir Solovyov

Vladimir Solovyov

1853 CE–1900 CE · Modern · Moscow

Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov (1853–1900) was Russia's foremost philosopher-theologian of the nineteenth century, widely regarded as the father of Russian religious philosophy. He developed an ambitious metaphysical vision centered on the concept of Sophia (Divine Wisdom) as the cosmic principle uniting God and creation, and on Bogochelovechestvo — "Godmanhood" or "Divine humanity" — as the telos of history. His ecumenical convictions led him to champion reunion between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, a position that alienated him from official Russian Orthodoxy yet made him a pioneering voice for Christian unity. His dense systematic works as well as his apocalyptic late writings profoundly shaped Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Pavel Florensky, and the broader tradition of Russian religious thought that flourished in emigration after 1917.

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Stop 1 of 71853–1877Birthplace, Early Education

Moscow

What they did here

Born in Moscow on 28 January 1853 (N.S.; 16 January O.S.) to historian Sergei Solovyov; studied natural sciences then philosophy at Moscow University (1869–1873) and taught there as a docent (1874–1877).

About Moscow

Moscow, the capital of Russia, is first mentioned in chronicles in 1147. It became the seat of the Russian metropolitans in the fourteenth century and of a patriarchate in 1589, and was the capital until Peter the Great moved the government to St Petersburg in 1712; it became the capital again in 1918. In the early twentieth century it was a centre of the Russian religious-philosophical renaissance associated with Vladimir Solovyov, Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Florensky. Its Jewish community, restricted under the tsars and largely expelled in 1891-92, grew in the Soviet era and is today the largest in Russia.

Across the traditions, in Moscow at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Vladimir Solovyov’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Vladimir Solovyov’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(2)